


Caretakers Part 2: The Caretakening

by mumblefox



Series: Across, Around, and Upside Down [5]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M, Original Character(s), asexual Keith
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-30
Updated: 2017-01-30
Packaged: 2018-09-20 23:40:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9521198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mumblefox/pseuds/mumblefox
Summary: Sometimes, you can't save everyone. Sometimes, all you can do is try anyway.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This fic deserves a proper title but I couldn't bring myself to let go of my irreverent working title(tm) this time, and anyway I wanted to make it clear that this fic is a direct sequel to [Strange Harbours](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9155425). I'm posting it as a separate fic because it still ties directly into my Across, Around, and Upside Down series and idk what the etiquette is there, but I would recommend reading Strange Harbours if you want this fic to make any kind of sense. also this was written prior to season 2, so if there are discrepancies uhhhhh pls ignore them

 

Red and Black hugged each other’s sides as they flew low across Caretaker’s surface.

The planet was pockmarked with laser blasts; Keith would never have guessed that the Galra would have come with such large ships, or with so many. The fleet scattered over Caretaker’s surface was more than enough to take down two weak Lions. Shiro had been right. Guilt burned in his gut, but now was not the time to address it.

Below them, in the craters, were all the Caretakers they’d failed to save. Gone white as bone, gone still. Sunk to the cold ground, or swallowed by the oceans. Little bodies, scattered and broken.

There were Galra moving amongst them, searching. When the Lions passed overhead, they raised a cry, scrambled back to their ships. Gave chase.

The Lions had a head start. It was enough. The Galra pulled off of Caretaker, lifted into space like a swarm of flies leaving a hunk of carrion. Keith’s anger burned, burned. Red couldn’t spare the energy for firing back at them, but oh, she wanted to. Oh, how they both wanted to.

With the Galra on their tails, Keith and Shiro slipped into the vastness of space, disguised by the dying light of the triple suns.

The Lions sprinted, jets burning, weaving their way through gravity wells and broken moons, leaving Caretaker behind as an ever-shrinking dot of reflected light. From this distance, Keith could see only that it was resting in the light of its suns, that it was warm. Caretaker could hold on. They only had to last long enough for Keith to come back with help.

He and Shiro didn’t talk to each other for a long time. They curved around the vast surface of a gas giant, watching the storms spin on its surface, lightning so volatile they could see it even from there. Keith let himself get lost in memory, of their first flight with Blue, jetting across their solar system in seconds, Jupiter passing in the blink of an eye.

They hadn’t known where they were heading, back then. And Keith didn’t know now. He only knew they had to go. Black and Red were content to run, to burn off their frustration in flight, and Keith let the silence stretch. They were okay, he and Shiro - they just had a lot to work through.

Keith’s knuckles still stung, and he rubbed them into his thigh, wishing they would stop.

Somewhere past the half hour mark of tense silence, before Keith could work his way back up to having a conversation, he heard something. It broke through his melancholy, a sound so faint that he wasn’t sure he’d heard it at all. But Red’s attention honed in on it immediately. It was an ululation, a distant, ecstatic cry.

In his head, Red’s answering roar was a thunderous welcome, loud enough to rattle his bones.

It was Blue. She was calling them, feeding them directions. She was coming to collect her sisters, and there was an undercurrent tied into her voice, into her joy, that was uniquely Lance’s.

“Shiro -”

Over the comms, Shiro’s voice was steady, relieved. “I hear him.”

Red wanted to run; Keith let her. His hands rested on her console, but just to keep contact. She was the one driving, with Black on her heels, bounding through the stars.

Heading for Blue.

Heading home.

Their meeting point was a system orbiting loosely around a dwarf star. It was dark, the stars a spill of diamonds on ink, dazzling, precious. They were a river that Blue emerged from, jets firing full, and they collided in the space between the planets, a deafening impact as metal met metal and the Lions butted their heads together in greeting.

Blue’s hatch opened, and Lance came rocketing out with the air inside it, pulled by the vacuum, but he was less shrapnel than a fish in a river; his jet pack fired, and he curved elegantly for Red’s open mouth.

Keith was already out of his chair, bracing himself on it as the pressure vented out. Then he hopped forward into Red’s open mouth, grabbed one of her canines, and let Lance collide into him.

The force of his arrival knocked them both back into Red’s cockpit, floating in the zero Gs. Lance’s arms were around Keith’s waist, crushing the air out of him, and Keith let him. They bounced gently off the chair and drifted.

Lance’s head jerked up. “ _Espera,_ where’s Shiro? Is he okay?”

Red helpfully blinked a screen up, and Lance put a hand up against the image of Shiro’s face.

His voice came through their helmets, impossibly fond. “I’m here, buddy. Suit’s wrecked, so I have to stay put for now. But hey, at least I can see you.”

Lance sniffled, tried to play it off as a laugh. “Aww, what, you miss me?”

“Every second,” Shiro said, and Lance ducked his helmeted head back against Keith, awkwardly.

Keith knocked on Lance’s helmet. “Hey, knucklehead. You heard from Hunk? Anyone?”

Lance finally pushed himself away. His hand, where it was holding the back of Red’s chair, bumped up against Keith’s.

“Oh, I’ve heard, alright. You see that - Red, can you look just left of Shiro for a tick - yeah, that system there. Castle’s parked on a little planet smack in the middle of it. Needs some repairs, but it’s not too bad, y’know - considering.”

Red’s eyes were aimed at a galaxy that was still being born inside a nebula, a hot center of gravity, a drop in the ocean. Such a tiny thing, from here.

But so was the castle. So were they. And tiny as they were, in all the endless expanses of the universe, they’d found each other anyway.

Like they were just parts of a larger thing. Like a hand can still find its nose, even in the dark. A single creature, reaching for its missing pieces.

And now they could go home.

Lance thumped Keith’s shoulder in preparation for heading back to Blue, and Keith punched him in the arm.

But then -

Keith remembered Lance ducking under Shiro’s arm during their first hangover, looping his arm around Keith’s waist, grabbing onto Hunk’s shirt, holding his arms out for Pidge. Keith had never been big on touching, but Lance was.

He slid his hand over Lance’s, pinned him there in the weightlessness of Red’s cockpit. Lance shot him an eyebrow, but didn’t pull away. The river in Keith’s chest ran high and smooth and steady.

“Thanks, Lance. For coming to get us.”

A strange expression crossed Lance’s face, and then he did pull away. “ _Come mierda_ , you’re so dumb,” he said. “There was never a chance I wouldn’t.”

Blue shoved her face up to Red’s, looking for her Paladin, and Lance shook his head and shoved off the chair with both feet, pulling a model pose at Keith as he floated neatly back into Blue’s mouth.

Keith regretted, instantly, being nice to him.

He hopped back into Red’s chair as she sealed the hatch and pressurized. False gravity stuck him back to the seat. And then inertia pressed him down more as Blue launched off and Red chased after her, exuberant.

Down on the planet, the castle perched in the bowl of a mountain range, in the memory of a glacier. The lights were on; the barrier came down as they approached, a _welcome back_ that punched the breath right out of Keith.

All three of the Lions piled into the main hangar at once, tumbling over each other and straight into Green and Yellow, who were waiting to catch them. The Lions went down in an earthshaking tumble that nearly cracked the castle in half all over again, but they were roaring their joy inside their Paladins’ heads, so loud there was no room for any other thoughts.

And there, standing safely against the wall, were two figures, waving madly.

“Red!” Keith said, and she coughed him up like a hairball.

There was a part of him that still thought he was on Caretaker, and he halfway expected to float. Whatever this planet was, the gravity was closer to Earth’s, and he hit the floor rough and tumble, then popped up just in time for Hunk to hit him like a freight train.

Beside him, Pidge was leaping for Shiro’s open arms, and they were both smiling until Lance jumped on too, and Shiro buckled instantly to the floor. But he still held on tight to both of them, and they were laughing off the stinging elbows where they’d all hit the floor, so Keith buried his face in Hunk’s chest and made himself stop worrying.

Just for now. Just for a second or two.

“You’re back!” Hunk was saying, or almost shouting, and Keith realized it was because he was including the Lions. There was an echo, of Red butting her forehead against someone else’s. It was a strange reduplication of his face pressed against Hunk. “Allura has been stressing _out_ , man. She was like, blaming herself for not getting the hangar doors closed in time, but we talked her out of it. She’ll sure be happy to see you guys, though.”

Shiro’s voice was slightly muffled by the two people lying on his chest. “She was trying to jump us away. It wasn’t her fault.”

“It was no one’s fault,” Hunk said firmly. “We got surprised, is all. And we won’t let it happen again.”

Pidge’s head popped up from under Lance’s arm. “Coran’s been talking about installing the same kind of inertia-dampeners that keep us in our seats. That way, if the Lions are in the hangars, they’ll tend to stay in the hangars. We’re just trying to solve the problem of scale, but it should be applicable tech.”

Shiro, overjoyed and sappy with it, kissed her cheek with an exaggerated _mwah!_ sound, and she pulled a yuck face and pretended to wipe it off. Then he did the same to Lance, who pretended to swoon.

Hunk let Keith go to turn and look over the Lions. All of them were in a giant tangle; without the colour-coding, it would be impossible to tell where one ended and another began, or which legs belonged to whom. Hunk dusted his hands off.

“Y’know, considering that we were blasted out of a corrupted wormhole through space and time and could have been ejected anywhere, including the inside of a star or within the event horizon of a black hole, we got out of that pretty okay.”

“Lucky,” Keith murmured. He checked on Shiro, but couldn’t see the wound from here; Pidge’s body was blocking it.

Something queasy swam in his gut, pushing back the joy of the last few minutes. His knuckles still stung; his shoulders still ached from hitting the ground, from being pinned.

Without wanting to, he remembered why they’d fought.

Suddenly, Shiro’s preoccupation seemed less to do with happiness and more to do with avoiding him. It was an anxiety that he would not acknowledge, that he folded carefully away.

“We have to go talk to Allura,” Keith said. “There’s someone I promised to help, and it’s gotta be soon.”

Hunk elbowed him gently. Keith remembered the Balmera; he remembered Shay; he remembered the first time he’d ever met Hunk, when his desire to help had trumped Keith’s desire to handle things alone. “Let’s go, then. We can let these lovebirds hang out a little longer.”

“Oh, darling, you know what I like,” said Lance, batting his eyelashes, but Shiro sat up.

“No, I want to go. I promised, too,” he said, and this time, he was looking straight at Keith.

His breath caught. He nodded.

“Fill me in later?” said Pidge, scratching at her nose. “I have to start running diagnostics on Red and Black. There’s a lot of repairs to do for the Lions and the castle and I don’t want to leave it.”

“I’m gonna go make food,” Lance said. “We found noodles, right? We kept the space noodles? I’m cooking those. And I’m telling you right now, the sauce is gonna be green, okay? All we got is goo.” He shot them a wink. “I’ll try to make it pretty or something.”

“Gross,” Pidge said.

Keith barely heard the conversation. When Shiro had stood, he’d come over and slipped his hand into Keith’s. He’d leaned their foreheads together and, in that moment, Keith wouldn’t have noticed if Zarkon himself had walked in wearing a party hat.

Keith looked up in time to see Hunk’s eyes slide off their joined hands, settling into a soft smile as he waved them after him. Once they were in the hallway, he asked the ship’s computer to find Allura and Coran, and told Shiro and Keith to head for the bridge. He cited an intervention on Lance’s noodles and then disappeared, leaving them alone.

Shiro left his hand in Keith’s. Whatever they were, this was part of it, now. Keith held tight, let his shoulder bump Shiro’s bicep as they walked. And when they walked onto the bridge to find Allura, she was so happy to see them alive that she burst into tears.

Coran put an arm around her shoulders in polite camaraderie. “As you might imagine, it’s been a long few days,” he said.

Keith huffed a laugh. “No kidding.”

“You’re both safe and sound, I see? No bumps or bruises?”

Shiro lifted his arm away from his side, and Coran slapped himself in the forehead and rushed over. “Allura told me, and I - are you alright?” He leaned in close, took a discreet sniff. “No infection or necrosis, far as I can tell, but it doesn’t look good. We’ll get you into a healing pod straightaway.”

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Shiro said, which Keith knew meant something like ‘I’m maybe literally dying but don’t want to be fussed over’ and which he reacted to accordingly.

“He’s downplaying it. He almost died. He passed out, a couple times, from the pain.”

“That was before Caretaker. I can barely feel it, now.”

“It’s my fault,” Keith said, ignoring his protest. “We fought, and I made it worse.”

There was a lot hanging unsaid under that sentence: Caretaker’s promise to fix Shiro’s arm for good, Caretaker’s ruin, a scream for help gone unanswered.

Keith pulled away, and Shiro knew better than to hold him back. But he drooped as Keith’s hand fell from his, just barely, a wilting in his shoulders. He looked away.

Allura was wiping the last of her outburst on her sleeve, but her head jerked up and she looked between the two of them, stunned. “You fought? You two? With each other?”

“Would’ve paid to see that,” Coran said.

“Don’t encourage them, Coran!”

“No, I just meant…” Coran sucked on his teeth. “Well, never mind. Tell us about your bigger problems.”

“We were in trouble, and we were saved by a creature called Caretaker,” Keith said. “And now it’s our turn to go back and save them.”

Coran squinted. “You said a creature, and you said them. What are we dealing with, here?”

“Both,” said Shiro. “We’ll explain on the way. But we need people - as many as we can get, and fast. The Arusians would be a good start, if we can convince them to help. And maybe the Balmerans.” He scratched the back of his head. “We’re still pretty short on allies, I guess.”

“It doesn’t need to be allies,” Keith said, working it through as he went. “Caretaker needs energy; doesn’t really matter from where, probably. I spoke to a guy there who seemed to think that the Galra would never attack Caretaker because it was too...powerful, and fragile, and unique. Useful. If we get the word out that it’s in trouble, people will come to save it.”

Allura’s voice was still rough-edged from her sudden tears, from days of too little sleep. “How are we supposed to save this creature, exactly? You make it sound like we’re going to feed people to it.”

“We’ll explain on the way,” Shiro said again. “No one’s going to be hurt, Princess. But time is a factor.”

“The ship isn’t functioning at full capacity just yet,” Coran said, tugging one end of his mustache. “I doubt we’d be able to limp our way to Arusia and the Balmera and back in time for it to do any good.”

Shiro glanced over at Keith just as Keith glanced over at him. “We can go,” he said, and Keith nodded. “In the Lions. Just give us a...a box, or something, to transport the people in, and you can portal us around from here.”

Coran turned to look at Allura, and some silent thought passed between them. Then Allura nodded. “We can manage it,” she said.

“Good,” said Shiro, and he popped the joints on his ruined armour, ready to replace it, ready to go again, until Keith placed a hand on his chest.

“I have to talk to you,” he said in a tone that left no room for argument, and Shiro glanced over his shoulder in apology as he let himself be dragged from the room.

Once they were alone, Keith stood square in front of Shiro. Keith stood his ground. And Keith forbade Shiro to go.

He hated to do it. He knew how he would feel, if their positions were reversed. But Shiro was still injured, and that mattered.

The thing was, Keith was ready for Shiro to argue him on it. And Shiro very nearly didn’t. Keith saw the gratitude on his face, a flare of hope, before the responsibility of being the leader rose up and, firmly, extinguished it.

Leadership was a burden Shiro wouldn’t let himself set down, no matter how dearly he wanted to, sometimes. That was a big part of why it had been given to him in the first place.

But Keith could take it from him, if only for a moment. If only for now.

“No,” Keith said, when Shiro inevitably opened his mouth to argue. “You’re staying.”

Shiro breathed once, a full in and out. “I can’t,” he said quietly.

“You can, Takashi. And you will. You need to rest.”

Shiro’s name hit him, took the protest out of him. This was a rule they had long been living under, and there was no way for him to break it without allowing Keith to do the same, down the line.

Shiro bowed his head, defeated, and Keith grabbed him by the ears and pressed a kiss to his forehead. “Don’t worry. I’m staying, too,” he said, and Shiro shuddered, wrapped his human arm around Keith’s waist, then his metal one, and pulled him in tight.

 

* * *

 

When they told Allura they had to stay, she didn’t pry for an explanation, and Keith didn’t offer one. She held Keith with her gaze, saw every aching angle, saw the way he tilted every line of his being into Shiro’s orbit. She saw that Shiro’s eyes were on her, but his attention was on Keith. Maybe she even saw the shadow of the fight between them, but that was too hard to tell. Keith could only tell that she was studying, evaluating. Seeing what she needed to see.

Allura was a leader, just like her father. Like Shiro. She understood that they’d made this decision for a reason.

She didn’t argue. She just turned back to her console and went to work.

“Paladins,” she said over the castle’s comm system, “to your Lions!”

Her voice echoed down the hallways, and in the hangar, the Lions disentangled themselves. They’d only just found each other again, only just come home. But they knew their duty, and they answered when it called. Their Paladins scrambled for armour, scrambled for the hangar.

When Lance and Hunk returned from the kitchen, slightly dishevelled, Hunk's shirt was inside out and Lance was wearing Hunk’s headband around one wrist. Pidge, already suited up, rolled her eyes at them and Lance blew her a kiss.

“I can hold the portals for two hours,” Allura said in their helmets as their Lions bowed to scoop them up. “Lance, you’re going back to Arus. Hunk and Pidge, to the Balmera. I don’t trust the shuttle guidance systems to autopilot after you through the portals, so each of you will carry two shuttles: one in your Lion’s mouth, and one in their claws. It will have to do. Collect as many volunteers as you can and report back in two hours.”

Lance’s face appeared on their viewscreen. “Hey, how come Shiro and Keith don’t have to do any work?”

“They’re sitting this one out,” Allura said firmly, “on my orders. Blue, launch.”

There were two frames of Lance’s face in which he was about to protest, then was yanked almost out of frame by Blue’s velocity, before the video feed blinked out.

The three Lions vanished into their respective portals, and Keith watched them go with a tightness in his chest. They were flying away from safety on his behalf, on Caretaker’s. Helping him pay his debts. There was a part of him that insisted he should have gone with them.

There was another, louder part that knew he was right to stay.

Shiro’s hand came to rest on his shoulder. Keith could feel the column of Shiro’s body, close behind him, an awareness of every inch of skin, of a heartbeat and a nervous system, a presence that had always echoed in Keith’s bones.

“I can’t go in the healing pods,” Shiro said quietly, and he bowed his forehead onto Keith’s opposite shoulder.

“I know,” he said, which really meant ‘I know you’. Keith lifted a hand to the back of Shiro’s head. “Would it help if I went with you?”

Shiro rolled his face back and forth on Keith’s shoulder: no.

He didn’t let it sting. What he wanted didn’t matter, right now. “Would it help if I sat outside it and promised to let you out the second I smelled trouble?”

This, he knew, was the rough edge of Shiro’s objection. It was fear, masquerading as reluctance. He had been helpless before, and never wanted to be so again.

But he had been alone, then. He wasn’t anymore, not by a long shot.

 _Partners_. If Keith had to spend the rest of their lives proving it to him, he would.

“Shiro, I’m just asking you to trust me.”

“I do,” he said, immediately, and Keith slipped out from under his hand and his head, turned to face him.

Shiro looked wretched, lost, was wearing the kind of expression that usually made Keith want to hunt down whatever had caused it. But this one was on him. When Shiro’s hand had fallen off Keith’s shoulder, he’d moved it to the join between his bicep and his mechanical arm. It was a vulnerable sort of posture. Keith remembered slamming a blow into the muscle there, knowing the weight of the arm would magnify the damage.

He would pay for it, somehow, would make it right. But for now -

“If you trust me, let me protect you,” he said, and Shiro closed his eyes.

“You shouldn’t have to,” he said.

“I want to.” Keith didn’t step closer, didn’t touch him even though he wanted to. This was a fine line they were navigating, here. “It’s not just me. Coran will be there, and Allura. Everyone else will be back within a couple hours. And any of us would sooner burn up a star than let anything happen to you.” He ducked his head so that Shiro would look over. “What kinda leader doesn’t trust his team, huh?”

Finally, Shiro cracked a smile. “I should’ve known you would find a way to use that against me.”

“I’m never against you,” Keith said quietly. It wasn’t quite true, but right now, in this moment, it felt like it was. Shiro would know what he meant.

Shiro was silent for a long time. His hand fell off his arm; his shoulders, by degrees, straightened out. “Partners,” he said eventually, and Keith nodded, and Shiro took a bracing breath, and together, they headed to the pod room.

Coran was already there, already waiting. One pod stood open and ready. "Scrubbed it myself," Coran said. "Nothing but the best for my favourite Paladin."

"I thought Pidge was your favourite," Shiro said, and Coran twisted his mustache.

"It changes," he said. "You won't be the favourite for long if you keep delaying the healing pod, you know. That's exactly the kind of foolishness that got us in trouble after the third battle in the wars of -"

"I get it, Coran, I'm going."

Coran shrugged and turned back to his control panel, where he was dickering with the pod's settings.

Shiro rubbed the back of his neck. It wasn't a gesture he made often; Keith recognized it as nerves. “I know it’s only gonna be an hour or so,” he said, “but wake me when everyone gets back, okay? I have to know.”

“Shiro. I promise to wake you up if there’s trouble. If there’s not, I’m letting you sleep.” Keith took off his jacket and tossed it on the floor. “And I’ll be right here the whole time. Go. Get better.”

Shiro hesitated. His eyes darted past Keith to where Coran was audibly still tinkering with something, and then his hand shot out, seized the front of Keith’s shirt, and pulled him in.

The kiss was bruising, desperate, barely contained. Keith’s hands came up to frame Shiro’s face, to hold him there, to block them into their own tiny world.

It was the first; it was the first. Since before Kerberos, since before they were Voltron, a life and a day ago, when something that had been strung up tight in Keith’s core had come, abruptly, untethered. This was the first because it was different: not a soaring lightness, but a drop, a fall. Like plunging back into cool water after being too long in the sun. They were not the same people they had been, the last time they’d kissed. Whatever this was between them, it was not the same as it had been, either.

This was the first. This was the first. And oh, it was almost more than Keith could bear.

Then Shiro, newly fortified, let him go. “Okay,” he said, and pushed himself back into the pod. His shoulders flinched when they contacted the back, just barely. The glass slid down.

Keith pressed a hand to it, and Shiro gave him a nervous grin, full of forced confidence, as the pod’s tech pulled him down into sleep. Keith stayed there, watching, blood beating in his ears like a tide, until Shiro was fully under. Then he settled onto the floor, set his back against the pod. He could feel it humming gently as it went to work.

"Coran," he said. "Can I talk to Allura from here? I want to fill you guys in on the situation."

"Oh, sure." He made a motion on the touch screen. "Allura? Keith is here and he's got information on this rescue."

"Princess, can you hear me okay?"

"Yes, Keith, I can hear you. Wouldn't it be easier for you to come to the bridge, though?"

He shook his head, not that she could see it. "I can't. I promised I would stay here until Shiro came out of the pod."

"Ah. That’s good of you. So tell me what your plan for this rescue is."

So he told her the story: of Shiro trapped inside Black's cockpit, unreachable; of the ship that came for them; of the Caretakers, who knew the Lions, who saved them all. He didn't mention Shiro's arm - that was a part of Caretaker's loss that was still too raw, and it was Shiro's business, besides. He didn't mention meeting Rext, either.

He didn't have a reason for that omission. There was a chance that Rext had been the one who betrayed their location to the Galra, but Keith didn't want to think that was true. It didn’t matter, really; he would be gone. Rext was Galra, and his people wouldn't have attacked their own when they attacked Caretaker. He was probably alive, but with Caretaker wounded, his crew would have to seek medical attention elsewhere. So Keith might as well pretend he had never existed at all.

That's the way most of his friendships had ended, after all. With a sudden departure and a refusal to look back.

Friends. Is that what they'd been?

The Galra who had attacked, though - he told Allura about that. They had seen the Lions fleeing, had given chase. They might have returned to scour Caretaker for others that might have remained hidden, or they might have known there were only two and were still trying to track them. They might have split the fleet and done both. There would be no way to know until they got back.

"We will be prepared for a fight, then, just in case," said Allura.

"Yeah. But Caretaker's weak. We can't afford to let any of the fighting touch the planet."

"We'll have Voltron, if we need it. You fought in a similar way on the Balmera."

Keith nodded, but not quite in agreement. The Balmera had taken more damage in that fight than Caretaker would be able to. If it did turn into a battle in the atmosphere, they would have to do better.

Allura's voice, when she spoke next, was soft. "If you fought Shiro over this rescue, it must mean a lot to you. We'll do everything we can, Keith. This is not a fight we will lose."

He chose to ignore the matter of the fight entirely. Hearing it mentioned aloud turned his stomach. "Does the ship have enough power to make it to Caretaker? I would say you can portal the Lions there, but -"

"In case of attack, we should be there. Yes, it can manage one jump. We will have to be careful not to get in over our heads, though."

There was just one other thing, then.

"Allura, I know it's dangerous, but -" He stopped, tried to imagine how Shiro would frame this request. He'd always been more diplomatic than Keith. "Is there a safe way to transmit a distress beacon on behalf of Caretaker? I know people will come to help save it, if they know it's in trouble. Caretaker is important."

There was a pause, then a sigh. Allura was thinking it over. "I'm sorry, Keith. With the state of the castle what it is, I just don't think we can risk bringing more Galra down on us than might already be there."

"But if we're not enough on our own -"

"We will have to be, Keith. That's all there is to it. I'm afraid this is not open to negotiation."

"She's right," said Coran, a little regretfully. "That wormhole banged us up quite a bit. It's a miracle we all came out in one piece, really."

Keith huffed, looked away. They were right - he knew they were right. But they were making the same argument Shiro had, down on Caretaker. 'Us for them' means 'us before them', sometimes. He understood it. Didn't make him hate it any less.

It was a flip, for him. A corner turned while he wasn't looking. He'd argued, not so long ago, in favour of giving up on Allura to protect the team. It was a point that had needed to be made. But now here he was on the other side, unable to give up on Caretaker.

He couldn't believe how easily a heart could hold two opposing views to be true. He supposed it was selfishness, on his part. Caretaker had saved him, but Caretaker had also saved Shiro. And Caretaker had been injured - or worse - because of it. It was a debt he couldn't leave unpaid.

"Alright," he said. "But please, can we just - hurry."

"We'll launch as soon as everyone's back. Everything we can, Keith - I promise."

The line closed. The hum of the pod behind him suddenly seemed very loud in the nearly empty room.

"It'll be alright," said Coran, and Keith ignored him. He didn't need to be placated, or soothed. He just needed everyone to get back here, and he needed Shiro to come out of the pod safely, and he needed Caretaker to be alive and safe again, and he probably needed some fucking food.

All of that would come, in time. All he could do was wait. But he could trust, at least, that everyone had gone running to their allies on his behalf, and that they would be back. Strange as it was, for him, he admitted that he could rely on them to do their job and come back.

And Keith, as he’d promised, stayed.

Stayed through Coran’s muttering and readouts and head shaking. Stayed through Allura, checking in over the castle comms. Stayed through the quiet after Coran left, when there was nothing in the room but the hum of the pod and his own growling stomach. He hadn’t actually eaten on Caretaker, hadn’t needed to. And he stayed through the distant arrival of Lance and Blue and the Arusians, who were overjoyed to be able to help the great Lions and had come en masse, both shuttles stuffed to the ceiling with little bodies. Allura patched him into Lance’s transmission, so Keith could hear his triumphant whooping and his overt bragging at making it back first, and he tilted his head back against the pod and smiled at the ceiling.

It was so good to be home.

Lance stopped by as soon as he could, still in his armour, helmet held by the jaw and dangling at his side. He’d had to spend some time herding the Arusians into an area of the castle where they could be contained, and looked about as tired as Keith felt despite his earlier joy.

“Oh, quiznak, you talked Shiro into a healing pod. Must’ve been pretty bad, huh?”

Keith only nodded, and didn’t move from his position against the pod. Lance came up to stand next to him and peer inside, and Keith leaned sideways, just a little, so that his shoulder touched Lance’s leg.

Lance glanced down, then looked back in on Shiro with a smile. “Hunk told me. Good for you, man.”

Keith hummed in agreement, a sound that was almost a laugh. Just a little embarrassed. “I’m glad you made it back okay.”

“Yeah, well, you know the Arusians...bloodthirsty, dangerous beasts. Barely got out in one piece.” He tapped one fist against the glass, not loud enough to make a sound. “Nah, I didn’t even have to explain, really. I said that we needed help and if anyone would come with us - ah, you know what I said. The usual stuff. Get them home safe and sound. They were basically fighting over who got to come with. Just piling in. I was on the ground for, like, twenty minutes total.”

A gentle ping, from overhead. Allura’s voice echoed slightly in the empty space of the pod room. “Yellow and Green have come back through the portal. Looks like they have all their shuttles accounted for. Patching them in.”

But it wasn’t Hunk’s voice, or Pidge’s, that came over the speakers. It was Shay’s.

“- are so many buttons! And lights!”

Hunk laughed, an easy sound.

“This is more than the sky! I never knew such vast spaces existed. Can we go over there?”

“If you want, we can check it out later. First, we gotta go save some people. Allura can hear you, Shay, say hi.”

“Princess! Where is she?”

“On the castle, but she can hear you. Just talk.”

“Princess! You and your Paladins have saved my people and the great Balmera. It is the honour of the Balmerans to help you save another.”

There was a smile in Allura’s voice when she answered. “I know it could not have been easy for you to leave your home, Shay. We will return you there as soon as we can, and we thank you for your assistance. I look forward to seeing you in person.”

“And you, Princess!”

“They’ve been talking in exclamation marks the _whole time_ ,” said Pidge, and that cracked a smile on Keith’s face. “Allura, we have twenty-eight Balmerans aboard. Most of them are pretty nervous fliers. Maybe ask Coran to get the hose...for, uh...for cleanup.”

Lance pulled a face at Keith. “Yikes. Gonna go make myself busy with the Arusians until that’s all dealt with. Call me when he wakes up, yeah? It was sorta nice to have everyone standing around when I came outta this thing. Unless…” He waggled his eyebrows. “...you don’t want anyone else around.”

Keith’s eyebrows pinched together so fast it almost hurt. “Lance.”

“Yeah, I’m going, I’m going.”

“Faster, or I’ll tell Coran you volunteered to help him.”

Lance sketched him a mock salute, almost tripped going down the steps, and did a lazy jog out of the room.

A few minutes later, the castle was suddenly very noisy.

Keith could hear the Lions landing through Red’s ears, could see the images she pushed to him if he concentrated really hard. Hunk and Pidge landed gently, setting the shuttles onto the floor with the utmost care. The Balmerans came wandering out, slowly, craning their heads to look up and around.

Ah. Most of them had still been below when they’d last been to the Balmera, and many of them had never come to the surface at all, never seen the castle. Keith wondered if these were some of those brave ones who had climbed the ladders the quickest.

Hunk emerged from Yellow’s cockpit with Shay glued to his side. She, for one, didn’t seem any the worse for her space flight, but most of the other Balmerans immediately sat down, waiting for the nausea to pass. Coran climbed inside one of the shuttles with the hose.

Down the hall, from the other direction, he could hear the high-pitched chattering of the Arusians. There hadn’t been so many people in the castle since he’d first come to it, and he couldn’t understand how that made him feel. Grateful, obviously, because they were here to help them save Caretaker. But also claustrophobic.

He turned his head to look out the window. The planet they were parked on had a limited atmosphere, and they were at a fairly high elevation. The bright pinpricks of stars, the blurry clumps of nearby systems, the planet’s twin moons - they all showed up vividly, a wash of light and colour. Keith remembered staring up at the stars during his year alone in the desert, when their scale had reminded him of how small he was. He remembered staring up at them with Shiro at his side, the first time he hadn’t felt alone in his entire life.

Having them so close, now, didn’t make him feel lonely. They just gave him room to breathe. He sat, let the sounds of their gathered allies wash over him. Let himself ride above it, with Shiro sleeping just behind him.

Minutes later, the castle lifted off.

Pidge came wandering in a little later. She didn’t say anything. She just saw Shiro in his pod and came to sit silently beside Keith.

She rested her head on his shoulder. He wondered when they’d come this far: from scowling at each other over Shiro, that first night in the desert, to sitting together like this. He rolled his shoulder forward so the hard knob of bone wasn’t digging into her head.

Hunk found them next, on a tour of the castle that he was giving Shay. She waved brightly, and they waved back, and Hunk pulled her onwards. When he showed up again, it was with Lance, full of restless energy.

Both of them were still in armour, helmets under their arms. Ready. Hunk’s booted feet fell heavily as he walked over. “Allura says we’re almost at the coordinates you gave her. We have to go down to the surface, right?”

Keith nodded. “Is this all we’ve got? Twenty-eight Balmerans and a handful of Arusians?”

Lance prickled. “Hey, if you think you could’ve done better…”

Keith wrapped his arms around his knees. “It’s not that. I just hope it’s enough.” He glanced up and then away again. “It has to be enough.”

“ _Oye_ , don’t worry so much.” Lance crouched down and rested a hand on Keith’s forearm. Keith didn’t look at him. “All we can do is try, okay? We’re Paladins. If it doesn’t work, we’ll figure something out.”

Coran tapped at a screen thoughtfully. “If we’re almost there, it’s good timing. Readouts are looking promising. You can wake him up, if you want to.”

Keith nodded, and Hunk helped pull him to his feet. His back was stiff from sitting for so long. Beside him, Lance held out a hand to help Pidge up, too. When all four of them were ready, Coran powered down the pod.

The glass slid open with a whoosh of air, clouds of white spilling out over Keith's boots as he stepped forward. Shiro didn't tip forward as immediately as Allura, who had gone into it fighting, or Lance, who had gone into it unconscious. He'd crammed himself against the back of it, but he still slumped as he came out of the sedation, prosthetic arm shooting out in front of him for balance, for defence.

Keith caught his elbow as gently as he could, but the touch still made Shiro react blearily, and he tried to jerk away, to gain distance as his brain woke up. He hit the back of the pod again, pulling Keith with him.

"Shiro! Easy, hey. It's me."

His eyes opened. He blinked twice, deliberately. "Oh," he said, and then he seized Keith by the front of his shirt, hauled him in, and delivered the same kind of bruising, desperate kiss he'd given before going under.

Keith thought, for the briefest moment, of his team standing behind him, and then he realized he didn't much care. Shiro was smiling against his mouth, the kiss a celebration, a promise kept, and Keith returned it, hands on Shiro's face, heart in Shiro's chest. Behind him, someone wolf whistled.

Shiro broke away, embarrassed, and Keith pulled back, but not far. "We should have been doing that for months," he murmured, and Shiro laughed, startled by the memory, of remembering who he'd been without it causing pain, for once. And instead of saying anything in return, he just leaned in, quickly, to brush one more kiss against Keith's mouth. It was still an answer, one for the question that had come after, all those years ago: yes and yes and yes and yes.

This time, it was Keith who pulled away, but just enough to help Shiro clamber unsteadily out of the pod. Keith’s fingers skated lightly over the wound in Shiro’s side from Haggar, but it was closed at last. There was nothing there now but a new set of scars, ghostly white over Shiro's skin, just a memory of what couldn't kill him.

"Aww, guys," Lance said. "That's so gay."

Pidge looked up from her datapad. "Lance, _you're_ gay."

"Excuse the hell outta you, I'm -"

"Bi, alright, I know, it was just funnier to say gay. Hunk, back me up."

Hunk scratched his chin. "It did kinda flow."

Lance gasped, hand to chest like a startled old lady. "You’re taking her side?"

Keith lingered at Shiro's side as they bickered. The weight of Shiro's arm rested across his shoulders; the taste of Shiro's mouth hovered around his own. And he was safe and whole again, with their team standing around them, comfortable and cluttered and sinking into the safety of being near each other once again. It had been a long time since they'd formed Voltron, or it felt like it. And in this moment, it didn't really matter. Keith felt them anyway, like looking into his reflection and seeing them instead.

To settle the dramatics, Hunk rolled his eyes, got both arms around Lance, and held tight until Lance sighed and melted into him. Pidge was, by this point, determinedly not looking at any of them. Lance turned his head, just a little, enough to brush his mouth along the shell of Hunk's ear, and Hunk went furiously red. He wasn't embarrassed, though, if his sly smile was anything to go by.

Keith thought of how they'd started: four scared kids - and one unconscious one - piled on the back of a grav bike. It wasn't often he felt that young, but that had done it: Shiro's face, unlooked for and still desperately loved, dragging him back through the years. Flying through the night like he was eighteen again, running away, running for the stars. Not knowing where, exactly, he was going but knowing that he was _going_ all the same. And at the other end of that running, look what he'd found. Look how far he'd come.

Shiro was waking up, was getting steady. Keith felt the readiness in him, the purpose that started driving him on, like restlessness. He glanced up, checking, and Shiro nodded.

Shiro cleared his throat, and the team swivelled their faces to him, natural as flowers to the sun. “Alright, team Voltron. Let’s go save Caretaker.”

Lance whooped immediately and scrambled out of Hunk's arms. Pidge swiped whatever she'd been working on from her datapad to her suit's storage. "Finally," she said. "We should be almost there."

"I just need some new armour. Meet you in the Lions," said Shiro, but he didn't stop leaning on Keith, and Keith made no move to pull away. Hunk threw a lazy salute their way as he followed Lance and Pidge and Coran out, and suddenly they were alone again.

Shiro let out a breath. When Keith looked up, Shiro was looking back at him. He felt the weight of that gaze in his bones, in his blood. It was a pull as insistent as the stars had ever been.

"You offered to go into the pod with me," Shiro said quietly, and Keith could only nod.

He'd offered because he wanted it, because whatever they were, whatever this was, it demanded more than he could give Shiro physically. They'd talked about it once and never again - about Keith's willingness to share a heart but not a bed, not in the usual way - and he knew Shiro would never push the issue. And they'd drifted, in Voltron; he knew Shiro honestly didn't mind.

But the pods formed a bond of their own, and he wanted that with Shiro.

Shiro leaned in, lips to Keith's forehead. The space between their bodies was a negative one, a vacuum that ached to be filled, and Keith had always been powerless to resist that kind of calling. He curved his body into Shiro's orbit, and Shiro's hand settled on his lower back, holding him there.

"I want you with me," Shiro said. "Just...not yet. Not until I know what's in my head, okay?"

Sometimes, Keith could be kind of dumb. He hadn't even thought of that. It had been a long time since he'd feared what hid in Shiro's memories, a long time since he'd decided to help bear the weight of it any way he could. But Shiro wouldn't push him, and he wouldn't push Shiro. That was a way to help him, too.

"Okay," Keith said. "Just...remember that I offered, okay? I'll still want it when you're ready."

Shiro shuddered, almost imperceptibly, the quaking of a heart newly shaken. "I'll remember," he said, and Keith reached up and dragged Shiro down, bundled him into his arms, held him tightly for a long moment. It was strange to hold him like this, to be shelter for someone taller and stronger than him. Strange, and wonderful, and gratifying, and something he would offer every second, if he had to.

Shiro pulled back, but his hands lingered on Keith's hips. "Let's get that armour," he said, and Keith nodded. "And let's go save Caretaker."

 

* * *

 

When they joined everyone else in the hangar, they were just loading the last of the Balmerans into the shuttles. Each of them carried little bags and bins and boxes, and Keith stared curiously at them before the smell and the memory hit him at the same time. Their last trip hadn't been easy on their stomachs.

Allura was helping get them settled with Shay at her side. "Remember, you're helping to save an innocent planet from the Galra. Your Balmera will be so proud of your bravery here today, and we promise to return you to it safely just as soon as our work is done." At their approach, Allura glanced up and climbed out of the shuttle. "Shiro. It's good to see you up and about."

"It's good to be up and about. Thanks for all the work you've done while I've rested. Caretaker means a lot to us," he said, and Keith nodded in agreement.

Allura tucked some of her hair back behind a pointed ear. "Don't thank me yet. We're approaching the planet, and we've run some scans. No sign of Galra presence, which is lucky, but the planet's biometrics are...not encouraging."

Black leaned down, and Keith's stomach clenched into a cold fist as he watched Shiro disappear into his helmet. "What does that mean?"

"No life signs," she said, as gently as she could. "But we're still going to try."

And all at once, there was no more time. He and Shiro bolted for their Lions.

Red was standing over Keith, and he turned and leapt into her open mouth, already sensing her, already syncing up. There was an undercurrent of stress to her thoughts that he didn't attempt to soothe away. They were fast, and they would make it. They had to.

A ping signaled the shipwide comms, and Coran's voice came over the speakers. "Within range of the planet, Princess. Ready to launch on your word."

Allura raised her chin, put on what Keith thought of as her monarch's voice. It carried loud and clear and true to every corner of the main hangar. "Dear friends! Today, you are heroes and saviours, and no matter what happens, your volunteering to help us today puts us in your debt. Prepare to launch!" The shuttle doors sealed, and Yellow and Blue and Green picked up the Balmerans gingerly. Black lifted one as well, and took one of the shuttles full of Arusians up in her front paws, hunched awkwardly on her haunches. Several little faces crowded at the windows.

Keith picked up the other and, on Allura's word, they launched.

The Lions flew from their hangar, each carrying a shuttle in their mouth, and hurried as gently as they could towards Caretaker’s surface. Keith checked the gravity readings, checked the atmospheric data. Allura's words rang in his ears: no life signs. Not encouraging. The gravity was normal for the planet’s mass, and the atmosphere almost nonexistent.

His gut clenched.

Correlation: fear.

“We gotta get down there _now_ ,” he said, grateful that someone had had the good sense to let him carry some Arusians. He gunned the throttle down, and Red raced ahead.

“Caretaker!” he shouted as he descended. “Hang on, we’re here!”

Landing was a jolting, rushed affair. Red set the shuttle down less gently than she could have, but was still careful, conscious of how tiny the little lives she held were, of how fragile. Keith was tearing the door open before the craft had fully settled, aware, on some level, of Black landing behind him and Shiro doing the same thing.

Blue and Yellow and Green made landfall and their Paladins popped out, frightened by Keith’s urgency.

Keith tore his helmet off. The atmosphere was thin, barely breathable, and he tore his gloves off too and pressed his hands to the dirt. “Caretaker! We’re here!” He looked to either side, saw Hunk and Pidge standing there, stunned and confused. Lance was crouching already with Arusians clustered around him, a tall shape bent to the ground in a field of heads and horns. He looked up when he felt Keith’s eyes on him, something strangely desolate in his expression.

“No,” Shiro said. He’d gotten his helmet and gloves off too. “Everybody touch the ground, hurry.”

The Balmerans, at least, were familiar with the concept. They crouched, hands to the ground, eyes closed.

With every ounce of will in him, Keith reached for Caretaker, for the beating heart at the planet’s core. _Take it,_ he said in his head, over and over. _I am Caretaker. Take it. I’m here to assist. We’re all here to assist. Take it. Live. Take it._

Shiro was on his knees, folded double over them, forehead pressed to the backs of his hands, flat on the ground. After a moment, and slowly, he picked up his metal arm and tucked it into his stomach instead.

All of them - Human, Balmeran, Arusian - pressed their hands to the ground and waited, and waited.

A thought crept up on Keith then, as he waited, as the silence stretched. He had wondered, last time they’d spoken to Caretaker, if Caretaker would lie to save them. He’d thought they would.

Now, as nothing happened, as nothing at all continued to happen, he realized that he’d been right.

There was dirt under his fingernails. And dirt was all it was.

“Keith,” Pidge said, impossibly quiet. “There’s nothing here.”

“No,” he said, and dug his fingers in.

Then Pidge made a sound, a placeholder that meant _wait_ , that meant _listen_. She was the only one with her helmet still on, and even from here, Keith could hear the faint sound of Allura’s panic coming over the comms.

He knew. Even before Pidge said it, he knew.

“Galra,” Pidge said, eyes wide. “The Galra are here.”

The fleet had returned, or had been waiting. It didn’t matter.

Shiro wrenched himself upright. “Everyone, back in the shuttles. We’re getting out of here.”

The Balmerans rose sorrowfully, some of them holding little, disappointed Arusians. They had all come here fueled by hope, by good intentions, by the desire to protect something, to save something. The Balmerans had nearly lost their planet, too recently; this was a wound they understood too well.

They hurried back to their shuttles, and the Paladins hurried back to their Lions.

Or most of them did.

Keith stood, and he didn’t go anywhere at all. The shuttles sat, filling with their allies; the Lions loomed over them, waiting for them to fill up so they could run. And then Keith looked up at Red to find her looking back down at him. Her tail lashed, and it was an answer.

And Shiro noticed. He turned as though he already knew what was coming, as though he already knew he couldn’t stop it. Black sat behind him, regal and imposing and - this time - totally neutral. “Keith,” Shiro said, a little desperately, “don’t do this.”

“Last time, you wanted to hide. Look what happened. This time, I’m going to fight. Hunk,” he said, turning away. “You can take my shuttle back. I’m staying.”

“For what?” he said. “The planet is dead, man. There’s nothing here to save or protect. If you want revenge, I get that. But we have to get it later, when we’re not responsible for anyone but ourselves.”

Keith didn’t reply. He just climbed into Red’s waiting mouth and sat down.

His hands slid over the controls. Usually, his anger was a slow drip, but not today. It coursed in his chest like liquid fire.

“Ready?”

And Red tipped her head back and roared a challenge at the sky. Black dots were appearing high above them, tiny ships that were converging on the planet, on them. Red’s launch was a gathering of explosive muscle, the first stage in a killing pounce. Her claws tore the sky as she raced for the fleet with teeth bared.

But then -

A channel opened from one of the enemy ships, and a familiar face popped up in front of Keith.

Stunned, he pulled Red out of her charge. Shiro's vid feed popped up, a question hovering around the edges of his expression, and Keith had to ignore it.

The pilot of the other ship was frantically trying to turn around; his eyes were busy on the screens, and didn’t glance over until he was at the end of his sentence.

“Hey, whoa!” shouted Rext the Galra. “Are those - I’m gonna crash, I’m not - I AM A BOTANIST. Whoa, man, those are big, I - oh, we’re stopping. Okay. Stopping is good. Hello, giant Lions! Truce, okay, we’re not here...to…”

Then he saw Keith. He squinted, looked from his view screen to the vid feed and back. Then once more, there and back. “Okay, either Caretaker was feeding me the good junk, or...those...are the Voltron Lions. And I’m talking to the Voltron Lions. And -”

“Get there faster, Rext!” Keith snapped. Shiro's eyebrows shot towards the sky, and Keith ignored that, too.

“So you’re a Paladin! Okay! That's fine! Voltron is real and you’re a Paladin! Uh’Keeth, buddy, come on, how could you not tell me? You're literally - didn't you know that Voltron is like - nobody actually thinks it's real and - and I was begging you for a story and you had the wildest one ever ready to go and you just shut me down, huh? I see how it is. Eretani!” he shouted over his shoulder. “That weird guy I told you about is a Galdamned Voltron pilot!”

“I fucking knew it!” called a voice from somewhere behind him.

“You did not, you - she’s lying. But listen, you’re here to save Caretaker, right? So are we. And we brought help!”

The first few ships had pulled up short, but now the fleet was building. The ships were a range of sizes and purposes and speeds and firepower, all of them quickly scraped together from whatever was nearby. Detritus of the Galra empire, washing up on Caretaker’s shores.

“If you’ve come to help,” Keith said bitterly, “then you’re too late. We tried. There’s nothing left.”

Rext’s ears drooped. “But we came as fast as we could.”

“Us too. Doesn’t change what your people did.”

Rext flinched, but seemed to accept the rebuke. He was no longer looking Keith in the eye. “Well, we’re here,” he said. “Might as well try, right?” He pushed away from the controls. “Ixor! Come land this thing. Yeah, I don’t care if you’re still irradiated, I will come kick your poetic ass all the way to the surface myself. Uh’Keeth, I’ll see you down there, okay? We’re still on truce. Just...let us try.”

It couldn’t hurt, but...

“Let us get into the air, first,” Keith said. “No offense.”

Rext blinked sadly. “I gotcha, buddy. Maybe next time.”

The vids closed, and Keith threw himself back in his chair. Shiro was staring at him over the feed, a tiny face bearing a huge expression, and Keith had no idea what to say.

Shiro had seen the bones of the story he'd only been half given. Had heard the Galra call him by name, call him buddy. Heard the lack of apology now. So he just shook his head minutely. "I'll pass along the ceasefire," he said, and the feed blinked out. There were other channels trying to be opened from the other Paladins, from Allura, and Red was locking all of them out.

Keith thumped his helmet back against the chair. Red nudged an emotion at him, a susurrus of I-told-you-so, not quite gloating but not humble, either. “Yep,” Keith said to himself. “Should’ve mentioned Rext.” Below him, the other members of Voltron gathered up their shuttles and lifted into the air.

The ships started to descend. Keith and Red held stationary, watchful, as they passed by, just a few at first and then a broad wave, a cautious swarm. The other Lions spread out, watchful and wary, but Shiro stayed with Keith, both of them hovering and looking on as the Galra landed, as they unloaded. Their fleet had to spread out, given few choices for landing between the oceans and the mountains; flat ground was hard to come by, on Caretaker.

He saw Rext’s ship when it landed and he piled out with his crew. They were Galra by empire, but he saw now that not all of them were Galra by species; one of them had long, curving horns that swept back behind them, and another was feathered instead of furred. He could see them so easily. He’d dropped lower without realizing it.

His whole life, he’d paid attention to what pulled at him. Watching Rext and his crew below, Keith recognized that he was being drawn in. This was the instinct that had given him Shiro, the other Paladins, the Alteans, Voltron. This was the instinct that had made Red choose him.

And Keith, as he always had, gave in to it.

Red dropped to a careful landing with all four paws bracketing Rext’s ship, the full bulk of her body looming over them. And Keith lowered himself down and made his way over to where Rext was waving beside his wide-eyed crew.

They were watching him approach warily. Keith was conscious of his armour, of the stylized V blazoned across his chest, of the way he carried himself with Red towering over him, watchful. He wondered what he looked like to these people, to whom Voltron was a threat instead of a saviour. To them, his Lion and his armour didn't mean hope. It meant war. There was a divide, here, that needed bridging.

Or there was, until Rext leaned over to the horned creature to his right. “Hey,” he said in a stage whisper, “watch what he does, it’s kinda weird.” And he held his fist out.

Charmed despite himself, Keith reached out and bumped it.

The horned guy sniffed. “How uncivilized.”

“You must be Ixor,” Keith said drily, and he jumped.

“I don’t - how could you - I have never associated with - the Voltron Lions are a silly myth,” he stammered, pointing up at the giant, very real underbelly of the Voltron Lion that was currently blocking them from the sun. “A child’s tale, told to frighten them into behaving! This is - I mean to say -”

“Don’t hurt yourself, Ixor,” Rext said.

Far above them, Red rumbled a growl. Her tail swept sideways, a single, casual sweep that could have obliterated the ship and every tiny thing standing below it, if only it had been aimed differently.

“See? You're being irritating. We’re not here to argue.” Rext grabbed Ixor by a horn and turned him away. “We’re here to jumpstart Caretaker, so get to digging.”

Ixor tore his horn from Rext’s hand with a huff of consternation and stomped off.

“Digging?” Keith said.

“He was being kind of a snot,” Rext said. “Might as well get his hands dirty.”

Keith smiled, grimly, couldn’t think of anything to say. They both turned their attention to the cold ground beneath their feet.

“At least it makes sense now,” Rext said. “Why they’d go this far. Voltron is kind of a big deal, you know? There’s blanket bombardment orders for anyone suspected of harbouring the Voltron Lions or their Paladins. But still…” He looked out at the ocean that vanished over the horizon. Just water. Just sky. “Caretaker saved me. Saved my crew, and my Captain. It was supposed to be sacrosanct. And now, it’s just…”

Rext sat down abruptly. “This is our fault,” he said. He put his head into his hands and then, almost as an afterthought, dropped one and buried his fingers in the dirt.

Around them, Rext’s crew were settling down onto the ground. Red bowed her head, touched her nose to the ground. Even though she moved as slowly as she reasonably could, Rext’s crew still scrambled discreetly away from her great head as it lowered towards them.

And then, with a roar of engines, a buffeting wind of downward thrust, Black flew low over them and landed as well.

She bowed her head as well and set Shiro down. He had put his helmet back on, and left it on as he approached. There was an angle to his shoulders that suggested violence, suggested fear. Keith met him halfway.

“I should’ve said something,” he said, and Shiro looked past him to where Rext waved awkwardly.

“This is the friend you made, when you brought me those ration packs,” Shiro said.

“Yeah.”

“I can see why you didn’t tell me.”

“Should’ve told someone,” Keith said. “But I thought they’d have gone for good.”

Shiro nodded once, curtly, then settled to the ground. Black touched her nose to the ground as well, and from somewhere behind Red’s paw, Keith heard Ixor let out a yelp of panic.

“Everyone else is on the ground,” said Shiro. “Even the Balmerans. They’re pretty scared, but they came to help, and they wanted to see it through.”

Keith nodded. He didn’t understand that kind of courage, that sort of kindness.

Caretaker might have, though. He felt another swell of grief, to think of what had been lost here.

And then Red began to make a sound he’d never heard before.

It rumbled out of deep in her chest, quiet at first and growing to a sound like thunder, like a thousand tumbling boulders, like an earthquake, vibrating up through his shoes.

She was purring. He looked at Shiro, who shrugged, just as confused as he was.

He felt, more than heard, Black join her. Somewhere around the curve of the nearest mountain, so did Blue. Then Yellow and Green, each even more distant than the last. The sound travelled through the ground, rippled the water of the oceans. Rocks began to tumble from the mountain peaks, shaken loose by the vibrations.

Keith looked back at Shiro, who was already looking at him. They could both feel Lance, as though he was looking back, even though he was nowhere near, could feel Pidge and Hunk gasping as they linked up unexpectedly.

Whatever this was, it felt like Voltron.

Across the distance, they slid back into a familiar notion of shared time. A house on the riverbank, windows glowing. Circuits connecting. Machinery turning. Keith reached out and grabbed Shiro’s hand, anchoring himself as the feeling swelled, as the river pushed at its banks. The purr was flooding the river, was brightening the lights. In the house, the mirrors warped, strained, almost cracked. Electricity skated over the surface of the circuitboard.

It felt like Voltron, but magnified, too big to contain. The purr was filling up all the spaces between the atoms in Keith’s body, was pushing at his skin from the inside.

A thought in the back of his mind that sounded a lot like Pidge: conduits.

He didn’t know what it meant. His fingers dug themselves into the dirt, clenched tight around Shiro’s. It felt like slipping together into one mind, one body -

One

massive

heartbeat.

Something that wasn’t him took a gasping breath.

And under their feet, Caretaker exploded into light. Keith gasped as it raced up his arm, every inch of his skin tingling, charged with energy.

Above them, the sky was awash in an aurora, sheets of amazing colour marching across the horizon. Around them, cheers were rising from the throat of every person on the surface.

And in some back corner of his mind, Keith felt a new unfurling, a cautious reaching, as Caretaker brushed against his mind a feeling of welcome, and of gratitude.

 _Oh!_ they said. _Oh, Paladin Keith. We are here. We are here._

“Hey, Caretaker. We’re so glad you’re okay.”

 _You are safe! We were afraid for you. But you came back. Oh, Paladins,_ Caretaker said, _we thank you._

Red’s purr was shaking the ground Keith stood on. He could still feel Black and the others, connected, as though a river ran through each of them in an endless loop. Hunk’s joy, Pidge’s wonder, Lance’s pride, and Shiro’s relief were flooding him, flooding him. He wondered what they were getting from him.

Shiro’s hand came up to Keith’s shoulder, and Keith covered it with his own. “You saved us,” Shiro said. “It was our turn to save you.”

 _We are Caretaker,_ they said, and then again, louder. _We are Caretaker!_ The energy under their feet rippled, shimmered, charged in a breathless line from their shoes to the crowns of their heads. Keith felt it in triplicate, rebounded amongst each of them over and over. Then the feeling broadened, swept out to include more than just the Paladins or the Lions.

He felt Ixor’s hooved feet on the rock, felt the tug of rings dangling from Shay’s ears, felt the Arusians, towered over but feeling safe and protected in this strange place. One of them was ducked under a Balmeran’s chest, tucked between its knees as it crouched, hands to earth. The Balmeran smiled down at it fondly.

There were creatures in the water, too, he realized. He felt them, for just a moment, as Caretaker gathered them all in tight, exultant and proud and grateful, before they were lost in the swell of tangled emotion, of different viewpoints making everything swirl dizzily.

 _We are Caretaker,_ they thought, and they thought it together.

Above them, the aurora sang inaudibly. The Lions purred, and Caretaker’s loud heart thumped in all their chests, powerful and alive.

They breathed out. Drifted apart. Sagged to the ground. Caretaker had taken as much as they dared from each of them, but had taken nothing not gladly given.

 _Be welcome,_ they said. _Stay, and be well, and be welcome. You are Caretaker. We are Caretaker._

Keith leaned back against Shiro’s chest, and Shiro’s arms came around him tight. He looked around. Rext was lying flat on his back on the dirt, arms outstretched. For the moment, everyone was too tired to move.

“Where are the, uh -” Keith realized he was thinking of them as hands, and caught himself before he could say that out loud. Instead, he jiggled his fingers at his temple, and Caretaker laughed.

 _They returned to me,_ they said. _In time, they will return to you._

“Oh. Good.” A thought occurred to him, in the lazy way of the exhausted. “Hey, Rext,” he called, and Shiro tensed at his back. “Did you sell us out?”

“I did not,” said Rext without even sitting up. “And I’m a little offended that you think I did, my guy. I told you we were on truce.”

“Alright, I believe you, give it a rest.” He kicked his feet into the dirt and pressed himself more firmly into Shiro’s arms. “We’re gonna have to figure out how they found us, then,” he said quietly. “How they keep on finding us.”

"I have a few theories on that, actually," Shiro said quietly. "And you're not gonna like either of them."

"Figures." Keith looked across to where Rext was slowly picking himself up. "Hey, Shiro. We're okay, right? Whatever this is, whatever we are -"

Shiro's arms wound just a little tighter. "We're good. 'Til they put us in the ground, Keith. We're good."

The ground shook, just a little. The Lions had stopped purring when Caretaker had exploded back into life, and Red and Black were lifting their heads again. The gravity was still normal, the air was still thin. It would all come back, in time. Caretaker would be strong as ever, because of them. Because of the Galra.

Because not every citizen is the empire, and people were still just people, and sometimes you could find friends in the strangest places, without even trying.

Keith thought of Shiro, who had been pushed into Keith’s life through bureaucracy; he thought of Lance and Hunk and Pidge, who had been pushed into it through chance and restlessness and the same unfocused searching that had been driving him for most of his life. He thought of the Alteans. He thought of Rext.

"I understand if you don't want to," Keith said, "but I'm gonna go check on Rext. I want to meet his crew. He's harmless, Shiro. He's good. And he helped us save Caretaker; they all did." He tipped himself onto his feet wearily. Caretaker had drained him. He felt like he could sleep for a week. "But I really want them to meet you, too."

Shiro bent his knees and looped an elbow over each one, sat with his human hand clasping the wrist of his metal one. Keith scrubbed a hand through his hair, smothered a yawn. He gave Shiro time to think about it.

The ocean shimmered, alive with light once again. The aurora had faded - had settled, it seemed, onto the ground. It moved, glimmering like a coating of diamond dust, over everything.

Over Shiro, who sat in the dirt and still, somehow, looked noble. The energy crowned him, elevated him. Keith thought again of carbon, of what it could become. His chest ached with how beautiful Shiro was.

"I don't want to," Shiro said at last, and that's what Keith had been expecting. He was proud of that answer: proud that Shiro could be honest about it, proud that he’d taken the time to consider his boundaries, knowing Keith would never push against them. But then -

"I don't want to. But I will." He wasn't looking at Keith. His gaze was fixed on Rext, who had rolled onto his stomach, completed the galaxy's slowest push up, and trundled over to check on everyone else. "You're right. It'll be good for me, I think, to be able to remember kindness when I think of the Galra." He pulled his helmet off, left it on the ground, and stood, more smoothly than Keith had managed to.

Keith smiled, couldn't help it. That had happened a lot today. "Don't get too set up for niceness. The guy with the antelope horns is a bit of a jerk, and apparently Eretani is quiet and weird just like I am."

"Quiet? I guess if we're comparing you to Lance."

"You didn't fight the weird remark, I see. Alright, tough guy. You're the one who -"

He trailed off. He wasn't sure how he was going to end that sentence. Every possibility crowded his tongue, somehow not enough and too much at the same time. You're the one who - helped me, saved me, taught me, calmed the caged bird. Who left, fought, survived. Who came home.

He didn't say it, didn't say any of it. He stayed quiet, swallowed the word _love_. It wasn't a word he used often. He couldn't remember the last time he'd said it at all.

And that's not what this was, he told himself. He knew what love looked like: love was candlelit dinners, gifts and dates and anniversaries. Love was sex and engagement rings, building a home together. There was no room in what he understood of love for the shape Shiro made in his life.

But last time they'd been on Caretaker, he'd made Shiro a promise and he'd meant it. Partners, until they were just dust and bone. Two parts of a whole. Unshakeable, unbreakable. The only faith that Keith had ever known.

He didn't know if that could be called love.

But that didn't make it untrue.

Under his booted feet, Caretaker sang. At its heart was a slow turning, ponderous and magnificent as a galaxy. Here, everything flowed.

And Shiro was looking at him, as though he'd been looking for a long time.

"One day," he said slowly, "I hope you tell me how you were going to end that sentence."

Keith let his mouth fall into a smug line. "Maybe I won't."

Shiro stepped into Keith's space, answering the challenge in his tone. He placed a knuckle under Keith's chin and tilted his face up. Keith felt towered over, caught, a small boat before a storm surge. "Maybe I can convince you," Shiro said, leaning down, leaning in, and Keith closed his eyes.

Not untrue, then. Not at all. In the back of his mind, Red purred, smug and pleased and comfortable. And Black, too - just an echo, like something in him remembered sinking into her brain, like the Voltron hangover, like a dream - as she coiled the word _mine_ around both of them.

When he opened his eyes, he saw that Black had ducked her head down again, hiding them behind the curve of her jaw. Shiro craned his head back, shaded from above but lit from below, smiling a smile Keith recognized.

"You big softie," Shiro said to Black, and she thrummed with agreement.

Then Red primly sat back on her haunches, a little unevenly given the steep terrain, and when Black lifted her head to look over, Keith could see why: Ixor was lecturing her about something.

"I'd better go check that out before it becomes an intergalactic incident," Keith said. "You really don't have to come with me if you're uncomfortable."

"I know. And I am, but...I want to."

"We can bring everyone," Keith said, and he said it like a question. Shiro nodded, put his helmet back on. Spoke quietly into the comms.

Lance, it turned out, was already on his way. The jet packs on their suits propelled them easily in Caretaker's gravity, and he appeared, a blue smudge on the nearest mountainside, before Shiro had even finished talking. The gravity still wasn't as weak as before, but Lance didn’t seem bothered. He twisted in the air, light as an acrobat, turning graceful corkscrews as he approached.

"Hunk is going to stay behind with the Balmerans and Arusians," Shiro said, reporting back on his conversation. "Pidge is on the way, though." He popped his helmet off once more. "Let's go, then."

Keith nodded, and together, they bounce-walked towards Rext's crew. Red had her great head lowered and Rext was hanging off the plating on her face, staring into her yellow eye, while Ixor lectured Rext from the ground, hooved feet tapping nervously.

She rolled a spool of helpless fondness out to Keith. She liked Rext, acknowledged that Keith liked Rext. She was curious to see what Keith did next.

"Uh'Keeth!" Rext craned his head around, dropped ungracefully from Red's face, landed awkwardly from a drop that would have hurt him quite badly, not too long ago. Caretaker was recovering. Already, Keith felt lighter. "Sorry, uh, I don't know what the protocol is, here...am I allowed to touch the Lions? She was curious, you know, just like poking her nose around, and she didn't seem to mind, and Caretaker said it was cool." He winced, pulled a face at the sky. "Sorry, Caretaker, I just busted you. We cool, though?" That last was directed at Keith. Already he was out of practice with following the wildly swinging focus of Rext's attention span.

"Yeah, Rext, we're good. I want you to meet Shiro."

Rext offered a fist, slyly, but Shiro didn't return him a fist bump. He placed his fist alongside Rext's so that the backs of their hands touched, a handshake for those who were used to holding weapons. Rext's face lit up, ears perking, fur on his jaw fluffing. "Hey, check that out. Some proper manners. You're Voltron too, aren't you? Where'd you learn that?"

Shiro smiled thinly. "Around."

Rext threw his hands in the air, despairing. "Oh, no! You're cryptic, too! See, I bet there's a good story behind that, and you're holding out on me. I'm still desperate, you know. This whole business with Caretaker almost dying has not made these people any more interesting." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, and Ixor bristled. The feathered one rolled their eyes and wandered off. "Figures you two would be partners, you know, you're both just awful, to me, personally."

Shiro blinked. "I'm afraid I don't know what you mean."

"I didn't tell him about our conversation, Rext," Keith said. "I didn't really have a chance to."

And this, more than anything else, seemed to deflate Rext. His ears drooped. "Oh, yeah, I mean...I get it, that's cool."

"You're lucky," said Ixor acerbically to Shiro. "Rext didn't stop telling us about his new hooman friend for _hours_."

"Human," Shiro corrected, and Ixor sniffed and pretended he hadn't heard.

"Rext," Keith said. "I didn't mean anything by it. Won't you introduce us to your crew?"

"Ah, sure. Hold up, who's this?"

Lance came swooping in, boots hitting dirt on Shiro's other side, angling himself so that it looked like a clumsy landing that just happened to put him between Shiro and the Galra. He'd seen them standing there talking, had seen the lack of hostility. That clearly didn't mean he was ready to trust them.

Shiro reached out and put a hand on Lance's shoulder. "Easy."

Rext extended a fist, and Lance glanced at it, but made no move to reciprocate the gesture. Rext's hand dropped awkwardly back to his side. "Man," he said, "you Voltron guys are hard to figure out."

"This is Lance," Keith said. "Sorry he's being rude. He doesn't get out much."

Lance spun, bait taken. "Oh, that's rich, coming from you. At least I didn't disappear for a couple days and come back with a half-dead Lion and a new Galra friend. You should know better, man."

"Yeah, I'm standing right here," Rext said.

"Caretaker, gravity," said Keith, and Lance quirked his head in confusion as Caretaker's energy shifted, gathered under Lance's boots. His body floated; his arms and hair floated. And, in a single, clean movement, Keith seized Lance by the collar and flung his nearly weightless body up and back. Lance squawked in indignation and surprise, spun in the air to right himself, jetpack firing, as Keith calmly turned back to Rext. Behind him, Lance spun gently in Caretaker's gravity. "I was probably never going to have that opportunity again," he said, and Rext busted out laughing.

Somewhere behind him, Lance yelled triumphantly, and the yelling got steadily, quickly, louder.

"Incoming," said Shiro mildly, half a second before Lance, airborne, tackled Keith with enough speed to propel them both twenty feet.

Keith got both boots on Lance's stomach and shoved, sending Lance sailing away. Before he hit the ground, Caretaker thrummed under him, caught him. And so did a hand on his arm. Keith craned his head around to see another Galra, and still - even now, even here - he nearly reacted violently. But she looked unwell, was thin and oily-furred. Her yellow eyes were dim.

He hesitated.

"You must be Uh'Keeth," she said.

"You must be Rext's captain," Keith said back, and she smiled.

"Correct. You may call me Soirse, if you like."

She guided Keith upright, and they both looked over as Lance's jetpack fired, taking him back to Shiro. Rext was pointing to Red, telling a story or making a joke, and Shiro seemed to be relaxing into his company. It was hard not to.

Soirse sighed. "It is so strange, to see him here."

For a moment, Keith thought she meant Rext, thought he was different while on ship, while at home. But then Keith understood, all at once, that she meant Shiro. His stomach flipped.

"You recognized him?"

The captain nodded. "Immediately. The Champion has always been...distinctive. And he knew the greeting." She eyed Keith, who was radiating tension, ready to react, even if he didn't know what that reaction would be, yet. "He is safe, here," she said. "I honour the truce. What my people did here was unconscionable. We are lucky that Caretaker has accepted us back, but for other Galra...I don't know. Caretaker may be closed to us, after this. And it should be."

Keith didn't know what to say. His gaze turned back to Shiro, the way a compass needle turns unerringly back to North.

"I don't know what you are hoping for," said Soirse. "But we will be watched, carefully, after we leave here. The empire knows that Voltron was here. It would do much to repay our debt to Caretaker, but I cannot offer you aid. It would endanger my crew."

Keith nodded, acknowledging the reasoning, but disappointed anyway. He didn't know what he was hoping for. He hadn't thought beyond saving Caretaker, and didn't know where they went from here. In the distance, some of the Galra ships were lifting off, breaking atmo. Clearing out, clearing off. Going back to their lives, mission accomplished.

Soirse coughed, and her voice was thin when she spoke again. "I have to rest," she said, "but it was good to meet you, Uh'Keeth."

"And you, Captain."

She smiled, waved a hand as she turned from him. "Vrepit sa," she said, and went back into the ship.

And Keith, as he always would, returned to Shiro.

He didn’t get to hear much of what they’d been talking about - he suspected it was basically the story of how they’d met - because Pidge arrived seconds before he did, and Rext broke off his talking to say hi.

Pidge flew in much as Lance had, coming in for a landing next to her people, but outside of grabbing distance of the Galra. "Hey," she said. "This doesn't seem to be a problem. Is it?"

"No," said Keith and Shiro in unison.

"Oh, good." She pulled off her helmet and stuck a hand out. "I'm Pidge."

Rext put out a fist, considered, then opened his fingers to mimic Pidge's open hand and knocked the backs of their hands together. "Not a single one of you has said hello the same way," he said. "Do humans not have greeting customs?"

"No," said Pidge, deadpan, and Shiro smiled.

"She's joking, Rext. We like a handshake, here -" He put out his hand, and when Rext put his out again, Shiro shook it.

Rext's face arranged itself into an expression of concern. "You'd have to put your blasters down to do that one, though."

"That's the point."

"Oh. Ohhhhh. That's kind of adorable, in the weirdest way. And not what I'd expect from Voltron. Voltron is supposed to be all, you know, explosions and ass-kicking and stealing little Galra kids who wander into the light, and destroying moons, and like, big cannons. I definitely remember stories about big cannons."

"Oh, we have those," Lance said, "and we definitely kick ass. But the rest of that is total bull, okay. We're heroes."

"Sure, buddy. Hey, I'm still waiting for literally any of you to tell me a cool story, alright. I don't know shit about you guys. Wait, that's not true. I know that I like this guy best, for some reason." He elbowed Keith. "The rest of you have some catching up to do."

"I can tell you about the time we showed up at Zarkon's house and punched his dick in," said Lance.

"Lance." Shiro's tone was not encouraging.

Rext scratched behind a purple ear. "I mean, I'm not sure I would believe you, but it would probably make a good story."

Ixor stomped forward. Pidge's eyes widened, and she leaned sideways to see his horns better. "No one has ever defeated Emperor Zarkon," he said testily. "I can recount verse to you that tells of Zarkon's invincibility, as set down by the poet Geretonquiere in -"

"Literally no one wants that," Rext half-shouted over him, and Ixor soldiered on.

"There is no possibility of Emperor Zarkon being punched in any fashion, and frankly the implication is ridiculous at best and -"

"Stars above, man, give it up, please -"

"- there is a line, Rext, between lies and slander, and -"

"Ix, this is why no one likes you."

Ixor tossed his head back, horns carving a cruel line through the air. "You attitude is why no one respects you, Rext. I do not need to be _liked_."

"That's lucky, because fundamentally, as a person, you are boring. Go check on the captain before I toss you in the ocean."

Ixor stomped off again. Keith was beginning to wonder if he actually stomped, or if his hooves just made it seem that way. Rext cupped his hands around his mouth. "Eretani! Come say hi!"

The feathered alien stuck her head out of the ship as Ixor stomped into it, her face a fluffy grey corona around a cruelly hooked black beak. "Fuck off!" she said, and Rext shrugged.

"Sorry. She wasn't raised right. So what now?" He turned his yellow eyes on Keith. "I mean, my people have to stay, they're still in bad shape, but it's gonna take some time before Caretaker is okay enough to..." His voice faltered. Rext took a steadying breath and jammed his hands into his flight suit's deep pockets. "Sorry. I'm just so mad. Caretaker means a lot to me, you know?"

Keith did know. Caretaker had saved him, but they had saved Shiro, too. They had saved Rext's crew. And, if he was figuring things right, they'd saved other Voltron Paladins before. The Lions liked them, knew them, trusted them. Keith had been furious on Caretaker's behalf, but at least he hadn't been betrayed. He'd known to expect this, from the Galra.

But from the empire, he thought. Not the species. And not all of them.

Pidge, as usual, was quietly observing. Keith didn't know what was going on with Lance, but he wasn't saying much, either. But the reassurance Keith was about to give came from an unexpected quarter. Shiro had been quiet for so long that Keith was beginning to fear flashbacks; being this near to Galra couldn't be easy for him. But instead -

"Caretaker's gonna recover," said Shiro, and he said it kindly. "Your crew will recover. And I don't think Caretaker holds grudges."

"Well, sure," said Rext, digging his toes into the dirt. "But I do." He turned his head up, up, up, to look at Red's enormous bulk, held above them. Her head was blocking one of Caretaker's suns, and they could only see her silhouette. She was a god-beast, a war machine. A nightmare creature. "Still can't believe these are real. I guess defecting and going with you guys is out of the question."

"Afraid so," Shiro said.

"Yeah, figured. Well, do me a favour, okay?" His voice dropped low and conspiratorial. "You get the chance, you pop them one for me, okay? You go back to the emperor and you tear his fucking house down. See if he likes how...it...feels. Oh, uh, what's -" His attention had caught on something over their shoulders, and they turned to look.

From the water, a single Caretaker rose, long arms waving, dreamlike, ghostlike. It was opaque, white as bone; Keith wasn't sure how, but he recognized it, knew it was the same one that had fallen into his arms just before they'd left. He understood that the bleached white colour of it was a scar, a memory of terrible injury.

He hadn't said it aloud, but Caretaker brushed reassurance against him all the same. It was a part of Caretaker, now, just as Keith was. Part of its body, part of its history, part of its existence. To Caretaker, it didn't remind them of being attacked. It reminded them of being rescued.

The Caretaker drifted along the surface, just as slowly as before. Keith and Rext glanced at each other, nodded, went. Walked to meet it. Sank to the ground before it, making themselves small. The Caretaker floated an arm out to each of them, eternally gentle.

The energy around them sang. It carried hundreds of thousands of voices, a piece of everyone that had ever touched Caretaker. A record of millenia, of an incredible life that was lived to protect and save. And not one of its aspects was remembered unkindly.

 _We thank you,_ they said, _for saving us. Caretaker will always be here to bring you rest. But we will not survive another attack. With regret, we ask the Lions to leave us, for now._

Keith stood immediately - of course the Galra could come back, of course they were endangering Caretaker by lingering here. But -

_You are welcome to return, Paladin Keith. Whenever you like, or whenever you have need. But we are weak._

Rext scratched his head. "They pronounce your name funny."

Keith ignored him. "Of course, Caretaker. We'll go. But can I leave you a communicator, or something, so that you can call us if you need help?"

Caretaker was quiet for a moment, considering. _If we need you, we think you will know. The Lions will know. It will be enough._

"Okay." The Caretaker's arm slipped off his, but Rext stayed sitting on the ground with it. Keith understood that there was healing to be done, there, that Rext's heart was shaken, and Caretaker could set it back to rights. So he left Rext and rejoined his people.

Pidge was bouncing on her toes, testing the gravity, making notes on her suit's computer. "This place is amazing," she said, not even looking at him. "I gotta run some tests on the atmospheric composition, and whatever this energy stuff is, and why the gravity is in flux. I'm gonna need _instruments_. How long do we have?"

"None," Keith said. Shiro was smiling his faraway smile at Pidge, and Keith knew he wasn't seeing her at all, not really. He was buried in some memory, but at least it seemed to be a pleasant one. "We make Caretaker a target. We have to go as soon as possible." He remembered Caretaker's words, Caretaker's careful phrasing. Caretaker's habit of answering questions that hadn't yet been asked. "But I don't think they would mind if we came back, someday, to check it out."

Pidge nodded, satisfied. Somewhere in the distance, Green lifted off and headed their way. Keith knew it because Red knew it, because the Lions were calling to each other, preparing to return home. "Tell Green to stay with Hunk," Keith said. "You can catch a ride with Red and I."

"Ooh." She put a hand to her face, batted her eyelashes at him, and he regretted offering. "Since when did you become such a gentleman...Uh'Keeth?"

"Never mind. You can walk."

"She can ride with me," Shiro said, and Black's hatch popped as her head lowered. "I'm better company, anyway."

"Oh, that's just great," Lance said. "I get stuck with Uh'Keeth, huh? I see how it is."

"The name thing is gonna stick, isn't it?"

"Oh, yeah. As far as I'm concerned, that's just your name now."

"Great. Well, let's get back. Hunk has been alone with the Arusians for, like, half an hour."

"Lucky him. I've been watching you make nice with a Galra. It was one of the most bizarre interactions of my life, and I've got one of those weird uncles who thinks every conspiracy is real. I'd rather herd Arusians any day."

Keith rolled his eyes and put his helmet back on. They soared up to Red, flew the short distance to where Hunk and Yellow and Green and a crowd of mingled Balmerans and Arusians was waiting. Many of the Arusians, Keith saw as they got closer, were perched on top of the Balmerans, or were held in their arms.

They packed everyone up, split back into their Lions. They flew away. Caretaker stretched out after them as they departed, energy connecting them, like two hands being pulled away from each other, fingertips dragging. And then they broke atmo, broke back into space. The castle waited, bays open, lights on. Keith felt the weariness of the last few days settle into his bones.

He and Red turned to look back, just once. Through her eyes, they watched the energy flow over Caretaker's surface, bright and alive and getting better every second. Somewhere down there was Rext. Keith hadn't even said goodbye, but that was okay. He felt like he'd be meeting Rext again, some day. Couldn't say why he felt that, but did.

It was nice to know that somewhere in the Galra empire, he had a friend.

He thought, suddenly, of offering Caretaker a distress beacon like the one they'd given the Arusians. Remembered that he had one here in Red.

She helpfully flipped the compartment open. He fished it out, stared at it for a long moment. Then he sealed his suit. Red roared in his head, loud with encouragement, with happiness, as she released their shuttle in the weightlessness of space and vented the cockpit, launching the device at Caretaker.

"Caretaker!" Keith shouted, though he wasn't sure he had to. "Make sure Rext gets this! Tell him what it is!"

Caretaker was far away, but was close enough that they could brush a single thought against his mind, like a whisper heard from nearly too far away: _of course._

It was a security risk. They would always be wary of answering that beacon's call. But it was better than nothing, and it felt right.

"Instinct, right?" he said, patting Red's console fondly. Not so long ago, he'd almost died in this cockpit. Shiro had almost died in his. But not everything in the universe was out to kill them. Sometimes, the opposite was true. There were still good people. There was still kindness, still goodness, still friendship. Sometimes being alone was not the only option, or the best one.

Red purred to him, a thrum of agreement, as they picked the shuttle up and turned back towards the castle.

And they found Black waiting. All of them were waiting, spots of bright colour against the vast, inky nothing of space. They held shuttles in their mouth. Keith thought about the shuttle held in Red’s, full of tiny lives that he was in charge of protecting.

There were things he had always been, things he would always be: a creature of teeth, a river, a caged bird that only wanted to fly. He was a name the stars had given him, a name he couldn’t pronounce.

He was a partner, a teammate. A Paladin. A friend. Those were newer than the others, but they didn’t matter any less for it. They were all just diamond-bright points on a line, pressed from a life of carbon, of who he was, of who he was becoming.

But this: protector, Caretaker. That was a star that shone brightly in him. He held it close.

Keith looked out Red’s eyes at the other Lions. He remembered looking out her eyes as they tumbled out of the wormhole, certain he was never going to see any of them again. He remembered the feeling he’d gotten when Rext had held up the ration packs. For some reason he might never fully understand, the two moments felt connected, links in a chain that extended further than he could see.

Maybe it was just that it felt right, to be here. To be a Paladin, a Caretaker. A defender of the universe.

The calling that had driven Keith for most of his life had been silent for a long time. His caged bird, his river, his vast, heart-eating longing for the sky.

Nothing pulled at him any more. It didn’t have to.

He was, finally, right where he belonged.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to my industrious friends [ashinan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashinan), [Lisa Onions](https://archiveofourown.org/users/buttered_onions), and [Bosstoaster](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ChaoticReactions/pseuds/BossToaster) who know to encourage and browbeat me in equal measure, and who are at least 90% responsible for this series ever being completed.
> 
> I'm on [tumblr](http://mumblefox.tumblr.com/)! Come say hi!


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